


Priceless

by katedev



Category: Princess Bride (1987), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, dreaming in movies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-11 13:03:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3327809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katedev/pseuds/katedev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Princess Bride/Sherlock mash up, of sorts. John has been injured and is currently in a coma in hospital. Sherlock needs something to do, he doesn't want to leave. He vaguely remembers being read to do when he was ill as a child. He will read to John</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First multi chapter fic on this site. No brit picking, please let me know about any glaring grammar errors. Thank you for reading.

The profound quiet of the room surrounded him, pressed in on him. The small, electronic beeps from the monitoring equipment and the soft whir of the intravenous pump barely intruded into the silence bubble. What was missing was the sound of one man's voice, of one man's consciousness. And it terrified him that he might never get it back. 

Pacing in front of the hospital windows that were letting in plenty of rare for the season London sunshine, he pushed a hand through his hair. Where it promptly got stuck. With a scowl he untangled his hand and flopped back down into the chair left at John's bedside. 

The chair from which he had gotten up from to pace. 

The chair that he had flung himself not six minutes before when the pacing solved absolutely nothing.

Waiting was intolerable.

Wondering about the outcome of the day was even worse. 

Sherlock slouched low in the chair, bringing his hands in prayer position to his lips. He closed his eyes and took a deep, deep breath, intending to retreat into his Mind Palace. The door was barred to him. 

Well, no, that was imprecise. The door out of the Watson Wing was barred. He was stuck with every moment of every memory he had of the man sleeping in the bed. 

The man who might not wake up. 

The man whose company he'd so very much missed after the Fall. 

The man whose company he had just regained, three short weeks earlier.

Until the bullet. 

No. Don't think of that right now. 

He turned away from the bullet that was displayed under the high intensity light that caressed it's barrel shape, with the sharp rifling lines. Beautiful in its own right. The sound of the shot reverberating in the alley, the small grunt when it hit flesh, the bright red blood spilled as a result. 

No. Do not think of that right now. 

There had to be something here that would banish the boredom, the encroaching fear that he could feel even now, in his Mind Palace. 

He took three very careful steps away from the bullet, to the DVD case. Every movie that he'd ever heard John talk about, seen John watch, watched with John was here. What would be good?

Doctor Who? No, he didn't care for the inaccuracies, or the shoddy science. 

There, a movie that he'd heard John reference many times. Not one of the Monty Python movies, he couldn't stand those. He pulled the DVD down. The Princess Bride.

He tilted his head to the side as he came out of the Mind Palace. He'd seen that book in the bag that Mrs. Hudson had brought the unconscious John. 

He would read the book. Books were always better than the movie, everyone knew that.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> continuing with the Princess Bride theme. Sherlock begins to read the book to John. Other chapters will be longer.

Digging through the bag with quick, impatient hands, Sherlock went past three pairs of pants, one pair of pajama trousers, two jumpers, a box of biscuits that he pulled out and shook his head at. Ah, his right hand met the spine of the slender book and he pulled it out. The letters of the title, the Princess Bride, curved around the top of the cover, above a farmhouse. He opened the book and leafed through it slowly, trying to get a feel for the story. He’d deleted the details of the movie, all except John being next to him, eating popcorn as they watched, well, Sherlock worked on his phone and he watched, mimicking the lines on screen. and laughing.

He was about to put the book down, to search for something else on his phone when his eyes found the word that made him want to read John this book. 

Pirate.

He put the bag away in the wardrobe but, shivering slightly in the cool room, he pulled out the larger of the two jumpers and he decided to keep the biscuits as well. 

Sherlock settled into the chair he’d pulled up next to John and settled the jumper on his lap, the cookies next to him on the seat. He reached out with his left hand and set it on the bed next to John’s hand.

Opening the book with his right hand, he leaned forward slightly and began to read, “Once upon a time. Really? Once upon a time, that sentence doesn’t make any sense. Of course it was once upon a time, Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin…”

 

John had no concept of time, of light, of dark. 

He floated, not seeing, not knowing, not caring. 

Flashes of pain, hot searing pain, melted his bones and broke his mind until he fled deeper into his own mind to escape.

For a long time, as if he could measure time. Okay, for a length of time he was not cognizant of anything and after awhile, there was that word again, he became aware of a deep, rumbling voice speaking to him. 

The words drew him to a door that had suddenly appeared in the black vastness of his mind. 

The black door, black against black, highlighted by light that glinted off the four characters that were on the door-221B.

He had no hands to reach out with but the door opened anyway and he stepped into the flat, their flat, with the skull on the wall, the mess everywhere,

But it wasn’t their flat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John, an injured former army man has been invalided home to Florin. This is John's coma dream.

John opened his eyes in time to see a large, flaming arrow careen right for him. He threw himself to the side and panted with fear when he next found himself in a bowl shaped valley, hemmed in on all sides with dark red rock. There were faces in the rock, faces that leered and jeered, faces that screamed in torment, faces that laughed. 

And the rocks themselves grew improbable green arms that reached for him. 

And the rocks themselves became audible, screaming his name, begging him for help. In the voices he could hear his fellow soldiers, the ones he couldn't save, no matter how hard he fought, or how fast he worked.

And John curled into a ball, far away from the hands that reached for him, from the sight of the oh so familiar faces of the dead in the red rock. He held his hands over his ears, trying to muffle the cackling, the crying, the laughing. 

He rocked.

And he woke up, for real this time.

 

And he found himself in a beige room, with a beige bed, a beige carpet, beige walls. His entire was leeched of color. All that was left was the color of Guilder sand. The color the sand was when it was not drenched red with the blood of the dying and the dead. 

He shook himself and the movement caused a firestorm in his left shoulder. He clutched at it, finding his hand full of beige (more beige) wool. He glanced down and say that he was wearing fawn colored breeches, soft shoes and a beige sweater. All of his clothes had seen better days. Where was his uniform? Where were the dark blue robes of the medic that he had earned through the sweat of his brow and through endless nights of study? He went to the desk and rifled through the papers there. 

One of the letters was from the military and he remembered now. He had been injured by an arrow and had been forced to leave his unit, drowning in the beige sand of the Guilder sand. An arrow had been the odd choice for the rocky shores of Guilder but there you had it. He'd been injured and made to leave. All he had left was the letter and his ceremonial sword. His uniforms had been conscripted to the war effort, his real sword taken and give to an able bodied man. 

He was forced to live in this beige box of a room, not being able to earn any money as a medic or a soldier. All he had left was the small annuity that had been left to him by his parents. His brother had gotten the lion's share of the moneys but then Harry had never played fair. He wouldn't take John's letters these days, probably afraid he was going to ask for money.

This was it, this was his life. He ate, slept, tried to practice medicine but that had been taken away from him. His sense of self worth was at an all time low and he hated himself. Too bad the ceremonial sword had no blood niche, otherwise he might've been tempted to use it in the way that it had originally been intended. 

He was useless, no job, no family, no money. No hope really that things would turn around. But, yet, he couldn't bring himself to do anything irreparable to himself. There was always something to hope for. And that kept him going. 

Smiling sadly at the letter, he took up his cane. Because of course, the fall from his horse had aggravated an old leg injury and made it necessary to hobble along with the aid of the cane. He patted his pocket to make sure that there was a coin or two in there, enough for some fresh bread or maybe some milk. Maybe a sweet as well. 

He locked the door behind himself carefully. He might not have much but that didn't mean that he wanted to come home and find it all gone. No, he was hopeful (there was that word again!) that when he returned there would be all that he still owned, still in the beige box. 

It was a few minutes later that he was perusing the fresh vegetables at the market stand when he heard sounds of a commotion that were getting steadily louder. Shouts and thuds and swear words were getting steadily closer. He craned his head to one side and watched as a richly dressed man was being chased by another richly dressed man. The chase was a mad one. The man weaved and shoved people and things behind him to try to slow his pursuer. That was where the screams were coming from. His pursuer wove his way through the obstacles, getting ever closer.

As they got closer, John could see that the man in front was clutching a bloodied knife. And his well made and tailored clothes were speckled in blood. Obviously something was rotten was a afoot. He stepped away from the vegetable cart and, judging the speed and path of the lead man, stuck out his foot as the man passed, effectively tripping the man, who went down with a yelp into a hunched ball on the ground. 

John stepped closer and kicked the bloody knife to one side and stepped on the man's hand when he went scrambling for the weapon. He made sure to keep well away from the blood on the man's clothes. Evidence was everything after all. 

The second man came to a halt next to John and stood panting for a moment. In an impossibly deep baritone he said, "Interesting."

John looked toward him, squinting into the sun that had decided to come out at that moment. The man was little more than a black shadow, coronaed by the light. "Pardon?"

"Beaches of Florin or beaches of Guilder?" 

"I'm sorry. What?"

The man scoffed and moved aside as several constables came up puffing behind him. When he moved into the slight shade of the cart, he was proven to be dressed well, although not as well as John had first thought. His dark hair had come forward from the slicked back way that was in fashion, and came down into his eyes. He didn't spare a glance at the two men who were now moving to secure the first man. He was busy looking at John. "Florin or Guilder."

John stammered slightly, "Guilder. But how?"

With a nod to the third police man who showed up, the man moved away from the cart and became sunlit again. His eyes bore into John's. "Easy enough. You've a tan but only where your armor did not cover you. You were injured in battle, otherwise a military man like yourself would still be patrolling. Even with this new found peace. You are educated, only some with learning would be able to calculate vectors and use geometry to bring a man down. The only question is why you chose to fell him, the pursued, rather than me, the pursuer." He looked at John's hands again. "Ah, a medical man. Your conjecture about a blood covered man running was correct. No one with blood on them who was running and not actively seeking help had to be up to no good."

"How do you know I am a medic? I've done nothing medical."

"Ah, but you knew where a well placed foot would incapacitate a full grown man. That might be military training, but not likely. Most likely is back to the original conjecture. Which is medicine."

"Name is John Watson. Since you are talking about me like you know me, perhaps you'd like the name to go along with the description."

The side of the man's mouth jerked up in a smile. In a flurry of movements he whirled away when the captive broke free of the restraining arms of the police and tried to run. He grabbed on to the man's arm and spun him in a circle, directly into the stone fountain that he'd just narrowly missed hitting when John had tripped him. He did not miss this time and with a groan he subsided. The guards were quick to grab and restrain him again. 

This was better than a play. John grinned at the man and said, "Brilliant."

The man shot him a look of shocked amusement. "I've deduced your injury, your medical career which is now in tatters, your military career which is also out of your reach

John shrugged, his mouth pursing slightly. He murmured, "You can see that I am useless."

The man's changeable eyes dropped over him in a lazy appraisal. "Younger son, living solely on a small annuity and a military pension. It just so happens that I'm looking for a flat mate. Do pop around in the morning and take a look. Two two one Baker street. Shall we say nine in the morning?"

John felt like a parrot when he repeated, "I'm sorry, what?"

The stranger blew out his breath and repeated slowly. "I am need of a flat mate and you are in need of a job and a better flat."

"Okay, flat mate I understand, but where does this job come in?"

"I am in need of an assistant, one with a scientific bent to the brain. You will do nicely."

"I'm sorry." There that phrase was again! "But we've just met and now you are offering me a job and a home?"

"John, the very fact that you didn't tell me to piss off was refreshing. And you are very restful to me. You used cunning and the art of surprise when you stopped that man. You didn't know why but you did it. Those kind of instincts are hard to find."

"But what is it that you do? What we will do?"

"Consulting detective. Only one in the world."

It was just so many words to John. He shook his head once, he'd have to think on it. But when he opened his mouth to say as such, he found himself asking instead, "What was the address again?"

"You will find that I resent repeating myself. Two two one Baker Street."

"Oh, okay and you are?"

The man dropped forward in a parody of a courtly bow. "Sherlock Holmes." He started off after the captive and the police, tossing over his shoulder. "Until tomorrow. And, John Watson, you are the furthest thing from useless."

And John was left alone, with his damaged vegetables, in something akin to shock. He stared after the man who was going to make him useful again. Useful again, that would be nice. He gave a coin to the green grocer and limped off in the other direction.


End file.
